This is a photo of the sun setting a dusk before the beginning of a New Year. I watched it while sitting on a hill at the Woodford Folk Festival listening to serene music.
The New Year always brings the promise of a new start. We humans love the idea of wiping the slate clean and starting again fresh. We want to leave behind the hurts and failures, the losses and disappointments.
Of course it doesn't work that way. No one can wipe out the past with a simple desire that it be done. In theory that seems like a wonderful thing to do but there is a cost.
I have known people who have blocked out the past. I have done it myself. It isn't wiped clean. That is just an illusion. We wiped it out because it was full of pain and disappointment. When we wipe it out of out conscious mind, we make decisions in the dark. We make decisions without the potential wisdom that experience could give us.
Painful experiences have their purpose. Everything that happens on this Planet happens for a purpose. Of course that purpose is hidden to most of us. We struggle to understand. Understanding is possible when we place the happening within its context.